Projects of the Year: 2021
Published by epsilon5 1 year, 1 month ago (2023-01-28T19:18:13+00:00) | Discuss this article

Welcome back to another Project of the Year! 2021 saw the continuation of an excellent run of development and community on Cemetech, resulting in the fifteen Project of the Month winners over the year (thanks to a few ties). Here they are for you now:

In January, there was a tie between Tari’s BBCode Library and Captain Calc's HexaEdit CE. BBCode Library is a library developed in Rust as part of a continued and more general effort to improve Cemetech's entire backend. It should make parsing BBCode markup significantly easier and more powerful, as well as being more performant.


The logo for BBCode Library, emphasizing its improvement over regex-heavy BBCode implementations.


HexaEdit CE is a powerful hex editor for the CE calculators. In January's 2.0.0 update, Captain Calc completely reworked the GUI of the program as well as improving the file search and adding a new API that allows the program to be better integrated with other programs. This tool has quickly become a vital one for both developers and calculator power users, as it allows files to be edited on-the-fly for testing and cheating in games more.


Using HexaEdit CE.


February also saw a tie in the PotM results between TheLastMillenial's cleverly named CEyboard and ACagliano's HASHLIB. CEyboard was the result of an effort to document every key in the TI-SmartView software, culminating in a program allowing you to use your calculator as a keyboard for your computer.


Controlling a PC using the calculator as a keypad via CEyboard. Click for original YouTube video.


HASHLIB is a program allowing for cryptography within CE C/assembly programs. It includes many hashing and other cryptographic functions that could prove useful for any program that requires a level of security on the CE--for instance, ACagliano's own Blast and VAPOR programs. Additionally, the library is compatible with LibLoad.


An example SHA-256 hash generated by HASHLIB.


Our first absolute winner! Frederik's on-calc sprite editor (sprite) Designer narrowly won the PotM in March. It includes many useful features, such as a color picker, the ability to open sprites at once, zoom, different drawing tools, and much more. It's a tool that could prove to be very useful for ICE developers or those who don't have easy access to a similar editor on a computer.


Drawing operations and use of tools in (sprite) Designer.


In April, RoccoLox Programs' Tiny Jumper ran away with the poll, taking an incredible 11 of 15 total votes. This is a platformer game for the CE with a focus on speedrunning, that also features very smooth gameplay, customization, and much more. It also stoked the Cemetech competitive spirit in the form of widespread community competition to get the fastest times on each level that is still ongoing.


Playing through one of the levels in Tiny Jumper.


Dmalenke's Calc2KeyCE handily won May's PotM, taking nearly half of the 20 votes submitted. It's a neat utility allowing for many types of calculator <--> PC functionality, including screen mirroring and input.


Calc2KeyCE in operation. Click for original YouTube video.


Frederik took a second win in June with Folders, a program that adds the constantly requested folders feature to shells that do not include them by default--or even the programs menu! It's quite a clever workaround that can improve organization for users with many programs on their calculators, in which the user runs a program that packs/unpacks groups of other programs.


Packing/unpacking of a folder in the programs menu via Folders.


Programmer's Calculator CE, created by DrDnar, narrowly won the July PotM. Despite the clear irony of this program, it's a great way to expand the capabilities of your calculator when it comes to...being a calculator. It includes many features that could be helpful for programmers in particular, including hexadecimal, binary, and bitwise operations. Finally, everything is wrapped up in a very sophisticated and user-friendly interface.


The settings menu for Programmer's Calculator CE on top of various prior operations.


In another hotly contested month, ordelore's AgneCE won the August PotM. It's an NES emulator written in C for the CE calculators, a port of the Agnes emulator for other devices. While it's not particularly fast, it's certainly a commendable technical achievement and quite impressive considering the hardware.


The title screen for Super Mario Bros. running in the AgneCE emulator.


September saw tr1p1ea's TI-81 CE win by a landslide. A patch/port of the TI-81 OS making it able to be run in z80 mode on the much newer CE calculators, this project includes the (almost) full TI-81 experience, even including a neat skin and the classic greenish-colored LCD. It's also much faster than the original.


Creating and running a program within TI-81 CE.


Michael0x18's text editor CEdit took the PotM win in October. This program is a fully-fledged text editor for the CE, including text selection, copying, pasting, searching, and a variety of other useful and intuitive functions. All of this is wrapped in a very nice, customizable UI.


CEdit's save dialog.


Due to some polling issues in the November PotM, we can't be sure exactly who won, so we have another tie! Combined, these two programs earned all of the votes in the poll, so it is clear that they are both deserving of a spot in the PotY. CEleste, commandblockguy's port of the classic PICO-8 platformer Celeste, is our first winner. It's a neat game with many levels to play through that required a significant amount of work to get ported due to hardware differences and issues with the graphics of the game.


The main menu and some gameplay of CEleste.


November also saw the completion of a years-long effort by JamesV in his massive top-down space shooter Alien Breed 5 Episode III: Impact. Including 3 episodes, many levels, multiplayer (!), smooth animations and gameplay, bossfights, cutscenes, a non-linear campaign in Episode III, high scores, achievements, and much more, it's likely one of the largest calculator games ever released--and it's available for both monochrome and color calculators.


Bossfight gameplay and the start of the countdown sequence in Alien Breed 5 Episode III: Impact.


A longtime project by Michael2_3B, Fruit Ninja CE was finally released in December. This is a remake of the mobile game for the CE calculators, featuring clever gameplay (just swipe on your calculator's keypad), polished GUI, different fruit types, and all of the slicing fun of the original.


Gameplay and menus from Fruit Ninja CE.


And that's all for 2021! Take a look at all of the projects' threads, give the authors their much-deserved kudos, and vote for your favorite project of the year in the poll above.

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